Session 24 – Subjectivity of Democratic Peace

In “The Subjectivity of the ‘Democratic’ Peace,” Ido Oren argues that democracy today is compared against the benchmark of American politics which is considered the best democracy and the best system of governance.

However the democracy that is prevalent in America today is not like the one which it has employed in the past. Its principles have changed overtime. In fact the founding fathers of the United States were not even in favor of this democracy as they considered that this would lead to the tyranny of the majority. They favored republicanism as it ensured that the voices of all people were heard. The route which American democracy took was influenced a great deal by the relations of the US with foreign countries

The case in point being Germany which although had a superior system of politics to US in the early years of the twentieth century was stamped as an autocratic state and scored low on the democratic scale because relations between US and Germany soured  as both took on an increasingly large role in world politics. This led to the US differentiating itself from Germany and the technique used was to portray Germany as undemocratic. However the author brings to light, the point of view of the American president, Woodrow Wilson and the father of Political Science in America, John Burgess and how they regarded Germany to have a far superior system of politics than many of its rivals in that era.

Since history is written by the victor and the dominant ideas of anytime are usually the ones which favor the one in power, the claim that democracies do not fight one another is one such dominant idea in today’s world. Maybe if the outcome of the Second World War had been different, this idea may not have been as strong.